Do you recall your failures more than you recall your successes?
If I asked you to list 100 successes or accomplishments in 2018 would you be able to, without doubting the value of each of the things that you list?
Are you stuck in that common, but not good, self-defeating habit where you don’t think that you have had many successes? All too often we can easily list 10 ways that we messed up in the last 24 hours but have a much harder time listing 10 victories we have had.
The sad truth is that we all have many more victories than failures – it’s just that, for some reason, we have been programmed or have programmed ourselves to set the bar unnecessarily high for what we call a success.
When you hear the word or concept called success, what do you think of?
Many people believe that success means owning a mansion in an exotic location, owing fancy cars and expensive stuff, having a large 6 figure income stream. For some, THAT IS the definition of success and anything less is not considered an achievement and thus, anything less would never make it onto that list of 100 successes.
I am going to encourage you to look at the simpler things in life that you accomplish every day. I am asking you to consciously focus on and celebrate your successes. Things like:
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getting to work on time,
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making/saving enough money to buy something
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making a healthy meal for yourself and the ones that you love
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making your bed
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going for a walk to take care of your mental and physical health
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getting through that workout even though you were ‘’dying’’ the entire time
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getting though that yoga class without being hard on yourself
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meditating for 1 minute
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getting friends together to play board games and laugh
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choosing to say no
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choosing to say yes
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allowing yourself to be vulnerable and trying something new and being OK at sucking at it
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making a new friend
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etc…
Acknowledging our past successes has an important impact on our self-esteem. Our brain remembers events that are accompanied with strong emotions. We know that there is always emotional intensity around how we feel about errors, mistakes and failures. We log those into our long-term memory and every cell in our body. So, when we are about to embark on a challenging or frightening journey or goal, the predominant memories and emotions will surface. If we constantly focus on our perceived failures rather than celebrating our successes, guess which one will win and stop us from living fully?
Let’s stop feeding the fear or failure emotion memory bank, and start feeding our victorious, successful side instead. Let’s imprint a huge amount of that amazing success energy into our cells and long-term memory. Let’s create a longer list of successes rather than failures so that when we need a boost of self-confidence we will have a massive positive pile to carry us forward and onward!
Now… about that list of 100 successes in 2018…I double dog dare you to actually pull out a pen and paper and DO IT! When you get stuck (and you will get stuck) ask a friend or loved on to help jog your memory. You will be amazed at what THEY remember about YOUR victories and successes!
Let me know how it feels to celebrate!
Join me on January 13th 2019 for a day of celebrating your successes and opening up to the unlimited possibilities for 2019. Let’s set the tone for an amazing 2019!
